Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Does Brandon Morrow hit the wall or does the wall hit Brandon Morrow?

Brandon Morrow exceeds at throwing baseballs. He is really good at it. I know this despite results that, on the long view, are merely mixed. He strikes out lots of people while walking only a few, compared to his copious strikeouts.

On days like Saturday, when Brandon Morrow is cruising along and everything seems to be going swimmingly, it seems the he cannot be touched. Then one bad inning comes along and submarines the entire process.

Is Brandon Morrow the victim of consistently bad luck? Is he proof defense independent stats are missing a key element to successful performance? Does his diabeetus limit his potential as a starter? I don't think I can answer any of these definitively, but we can surely look.

Brandon Morrow tires easily

Do I believe this to be the case? I don't believe that I do. It is a possibility, especially when we consider Morrow's fluctuating blood sugar. Some people, like Dustin Parkes, believe Morrow gets hurt during Spring Training because he isn't conditioned properly. This may well be the case but I don't know that I'm ready to condemn Morrow's off-season workout routine. But it is worth investigating.

Firstly, let's look at Morrow's numbers by inning. Using Baseball Reference's numbers it is more about results than process but that is what we're after - the source of middling results.

This...this is something. Something more, anyway. Morrow's numbers in the 75-100 pitch group are actually better as far as strikeouts and walks go but it seems that more balls turn in hits. His BABIP is WAY out of whack with the rest of his numbers.

Beyond the numbers here, I looked at Morrow's pitch f/x info and created the same 25 pitch buckets to look at some more in-depth numbers.

Pitch Bucket

Whiff Rate

Average Fastball velocity

1-25

11.4%

94.02

26-50

13.6%

94.03

51-75

11.1%

93.42

76-100

12.7%

93.18

100+

11.2%

93.55

Does that look, to you, like a man who tires early? It doesn't look that way to me. Less than a full mile-per-hour is not significant in my eyes. He keeps missing bats and the home runs aren't even that much more significant.

One thing that does increase as Brandon Morrow starts progress: errors. Hardly the perfect metric of the fielding support he receives but it stands our none the less. In fact, of the 90 balls put in play in the 50-75 pitch bucket, 4.44% of them were turned into errors. That's only 4 errors of 6 committed behind him this season in total.

It isn't that Morrow is completely free of guilt and his defense has completely let him down, it is that shit happens. Shit seems to happen over and over to Brandon Morrow - only when it matters most. He comes so close to putting together completely dominant starts.

The skill is there. I don't think there is much development left for Brandon Morrow, more discovery.

Interesting coaches growing up always used to talk about pitchers who keep their defense in the game get better defense, where as strikeout/walk pitchers are more susceptible to errors since fielders aren't as engaged.

Being the sabre-minded person I am, I assumed that this is bullshit. Professional athletes make good defensive plays. Morrow's anomaly seems to support the little league coach line of thinking though.

Likely just a coincidence, but would be interesting to see a study perhaps using a better defensive statistic, to see if brandon morrow type pitchers are susceptible to weaker defense as the game goes on then groundball types. Could explain the consistent FIP all stars like Nolasco and Morrow constantly outperforming their ERAs.

It seems like you might be on the cusp of a major new insight into pitcher's BABIP. There's not enough here to draw any real conclusions but there's certainly enough to fuel some exciting fact based speculation.

Just as the trope that BABIP is luck driven has caught on in the mainstream media, it is being seriously re-though by serious analysts. Jonathan Hale for instance has a very credible theory the pitchers are active participants in the normalization of BABIP and not just passive bystanders.